TITLE: The type of string literals is not const correct


[ Adapted from "C++ Gotchas", tutorial notes by Tom Cargill,
  p. 37 ]


Even though you may not change characters in a string literal,
the type of the literal is not const. The type is char[] not
const char []. 

[ I believe this was done for backwards compatibility with the
  C standard IO library, ie printf, etc. -adc ]

#include <stdio.h>

int main ()
{
    char* danger = "literal";
    danger [2] = 'b';            // compiles OK

    printf ("%s\n", danger);
    return 0;
}


On one machine the output might be "liberal". On another machin
the output might be undefined. Note that some machines trap this
as a run-time error by separating data and code into different
segments.

Note that the following alternative is safer and preferable

	const char* p = "literal";

For more information, see the ARM p. 10.